Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff was quite a bizarre movie. Directed by Sam Bhattacharjee, this supernatural horror outstayed its welcome, yet never became boring, instead there was a feeling of endlessness to the relatively simple story being told.
Set in the late 1970's, this takes place in a small coastal town in England which has become known for the oddly high number of suicides that have all occurred on the same cliff. With Inspector Jenny Jones (Emma Galliano) baffled as to the reasons why this keep happening, she calls in the mysterious paranormal detective Barun (Priyanshu Chatterjee). He soon learns that this phenomenon may be supernatural in nature, and that it could well be linked to an old house on a cliff nearby. Meanwhile, Soumili (Nyra Banerjee) and her husband Harmesh (Sid Makkar), newly arrived in the country have moved into this house, with Soumili in particular beginning to experience apparently supernatural occurrences.
I'm pretty sure the version of the movie I watched was dubbed, either that or many of the actors were not able to say their lines in a believable way. At first this was distracting, but to be honest, corny dialogue aside, I had mostly zoned out the weird delivery of lines by the film's conclusion. There is a lot packed into the two hour run time, yet paradoxically not really much happens. There is a slight body count, and moments of attempted horror, but this maintains a chilled relaxed atmosphere to it. The story on the surface is very simple, I'm not quite sure how it fills the run time.
The characters are mainly strange in their behaviours, I did kind of like Barun, his introductory scene in which he walks around a house that a series of murders has taken place, and is able to see snapshots of the murderer and victims frozen in time was actually neat, it made me want to keep watching. I'm not sure who Barun's assistant was played by, but the actor had a genuinely impressive mane of hair that I was quite jealous of. Tony Richardson had a fun role as Father Paul, though his subplot appeared early on, only to fizzle out until it re-emerged right towards the end of the movie in an entertaining exorcism segment. Then there was Brian (George Dawson), the mentally challenged man-child with the knack for taking photos that proved to be very much needed for Barun to crack the supernatural case.
It seemed that the reliance on CG effects was all consuming here, even when it felt like it would have been far easier to use a practical effect, a CG effect was used in its place. Outside of a few moments (such as a roof ripping off a house, swarms of bugs, and people dissolving into pixelated fragments), these effects were nearly passable. My problem with them was they looked too clean, they didn't look 'raw' enough, more with a clinical feel that took away from the atmosphere the film was going for. Doors and windows opening on their own, objects moving around, and even characters who appeared to have been possessed by demons all looked acceptable, but the moments that try and elicit fear often fell flat due to the obviously fake effects.
Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff wasn't a great film, it didn't really even feel like it had the makings of such a movie, instead it was middling in nearly all aspects, but weirdly addictive to watch Barun Rai and the House on the Cliff was due for release from High Fliers Films on 27th February.
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